The present disclosure relates to a vehicle drive device that includes a rotary electric machine that serves as a drive force source for wheels, a speed change mechanism, a pump motor that serves as a drive force source for an electric pump, and a case.
A device described in Japanese Patent Application Publication No. 2012-121549 and a device described in Japanese Patent Application Publication No. 2011-67093 are known as examples of the vehicle drive device described above. In the device according to Japanese Patent Application Publication No. 2012-121549, a first inverter [inverter 440] that controls a rotary electric machine [motor 200] and a second inverter [oil pump controller 420] that controls a pump motor [electric oil pump 400] are connected to different electric power sources. The first inverter is connected to a high-voltage battery [main battery 450] for driving the vehicle, and the second inverter is connected to a low-voltage battery [auxiliary battery 430] for driving auxiliaries. In such a configuration, however, wiring between the electric power source and the inverter and between the inverter and the rotary electric machine or the pump motor is required for each of the rotary electric machine and the pump motor. Hence, wiring in the entire device is complicated.
In this respect, in the device according to Japanese Patent Application Publication No. 2011-67093, a first inverter [inverter device 140] that controls a rotary electric machine [motor generator 192] and a second inverter [auxiliary inverter device 43] that controls a pump motor [auxiliary motor 195] are driven by a common electric power source [battery 136]. This allows wiring between the common electric power source and the inverters to be partially commonalized, which relieves complication of the wiring more or less. In the device according to Japanese Patent Application Publication No. 2011-67093, however, the first inverter and the second inverter are accommodated in a dedicated inverter case [housing for an electric power conversion device 200] together with a smoothing capacitor [capacitor module 500]. The inverter case is fixed to a drive device case that accommodates the rotary electric machine and a speed change mechanism [transmission 118]. Therefore, it is necessary to prepare such a dedicated inverter case and a fixation seat for fixation of the inverter case to the drive device case, which increases the number of parts. In addition, the size of the entire device is also increased.